Page:Ralph Connor - The man from Glengarry.djvu/432

  Mrs. Murray, "and I am quite sure you will stand up for what is right," and with another bow the colonel took his leave.

"Now, Harry, you must go, too," said Kate; "you can see your aunt again after to-morrow, and I must get my beauty sleep, besides I don't want to stand up with a man gaunt and hollow-eyed for lack of sleep," and she bundled him off in spite of his remonstrances. But eager as Kate was for her beauty sleep, the light burned late in her room; and long after she had seen Mrs. Murray snugly tucked in for the night, she sat with Ranald's open letter in her hand, reading it till she almost knew it by heart. It told, among other things, of his differences with the company in regard to stores, wages, and supplies, and of his efforts to establish a reading-room at the mills, and a library at the camps; but there was a sentence at the close of the letter that Kate read over and over again with the light of a great love in her eyes and with a cry of pain in her heart. "The magazines and papers that Kate sends are a great boon. Dear Kate, what a girl she is! I know none like her; and what a friend she has been to me ever since the day she stood up for me at Quebec. You remember I told you about that. What a guy I must have been, but she never showed a sign of shame. I often think of that now, how different she was from another! I see it now as I could not then—a man is a fool once in his life, but I have got my lesson and still have a good true friend." Often she read and long she pondered the last words. It was so easy to read too much into